Shofar FTP Archive File: places/germany/nuremberg/tusa/west.001

Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: The Impoverishment of Europe
Summary: The French case against the Nazis notes the vast pillage,
leaving Western Europe incapable of feeding either itself
or a defeated Germany.
Reply-To: kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords:
Archive/File: holocaust/germany/nuremberg west.001
Last-Modified: 1994/12/04
During their discussion of the French presentation of the case
relating to Crimes Against Humanity in Western Europe, the Tusas
included the following material. (In light of discussions about
Bacque's "Other Losses," and conditions in Europe immediately
following the surrender of Germany, I feel it is important to
understand the situation clearly. knm)
"More than any other case, theirs [the French] was based on
documents. It was reckoned that of the 2,100 finally submitted to
the court during the prosecution case, 800 had been introduced by
the French. The onslaught of their documents was inexorable. Nearly
all of them were German - unanswerable. Backing them, providing the
statistics of Nazi crime, were the national reporters from each of
the countries for whom France spoke.
The facts and figures of the economic spoilation of Europe told of
theft and destruction almost beyond imagining - the more so because
each report warned that the scale of pillage and havoc had been so
great that it was still not possible to estimate the final totals.
Some of the figures were difficult to grasp and they certainly made
little impact on many in court or in the Press. For instance, it
needed a degree of financial knowledge and understanding of each
country's economy to absorb such figures as those for financial
seizures over and above what was legally permitted for occupation
costs; in Denmark, the illegal seizures had been 8,000 million
crowns, in Belgium 130,000 million Belgian francs. It helped when
such figures were put into perspective: in France, the maximum sum
which Germany could legally demand for the maintenance of her army
of occupation was 74,000 million francs; yet the final French
payment had come to 745,000 million, ten times larger. It was hard
to picture information such as that the Germans had requisitioned
without payment 70 million crowns worth of Danish agricultural
produce each month or seized 1,100 million guilders worth of
machinery and oil as they left Holland. The specific was easier to
envisage: from Norway alone the Nazis had taken 30,000 tons of
meat, 61,000 tons of dairy produce, 26,000 tons of fish, 68,000
tons of fruit and vegatables, 112,000 tons of fats, 300,000 tons of
hay and straw, 13,000 tons of soap; in Holland they seized 600,000
hogs, 275,000 cows, 489 locomotives, 28,950 freight cars, and even
1 million bicycles and 600,000 radio sets.
As the torrent of statistics poured out, the mind tended to block
off. Yet those who stopped to reflect realized what these figures
had finally added up to. As J. Emlyn Williams, of the 'Christian
Science Monitor' put it, this part of the French case explained why
Europe was now in 'such a gigantic mess. It was not simply the
result of the war but also the manner in which the Germans waged
it, leaving those people they overran without means for their own
recovery at the war's end and therefore of supplying help to the
defeated Germans themselves.'<26> Bombing and fighting by both
sides had done much to destroy Europe. But pillage by the Germans
alone also wrought a terrible destruction and left a legacy of
poverty and hunger."(Tusa, 190-1)
<26> The Christian Science Monitor, 24 January.
Work Cited
Tusa, Ann & John. The Nuremberg Trial. Birmingham, Alabama: The
Notable Trials Library, Division of Gryphon Editions, Inc., 1990

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